One thing we should toss out: Marie Arana’s rant April 20, 2009

This weekend, Marie Arana wrote an editorial for the Washington Post detailing how the Nobel Prize in Literature is decided by a bunch of anti-American meanies and we should get rid of it. I don’t have a problem, necessarily, with her thesis, but her reasoning is so shallow and strange that I had to draft a response:

Marie Arana’s derisive depiction of the Nobel Prize in Literature in the Post’s feature “10 Things We Should Toss” was such a thinly cloaked move towards inserting politics where there are none that I’m surprised you ran it. To read an argument that several of the Academy’s selections are out of touch with modern literature would be interesting; however, Arana’s editorial concludes that we should dismiss the Nobel Prize in Literature because a) the academy is snobby towards Americans and b) they have failed to recognize several great authors.

While compelling works such as Lolita stand out among their peers, they do not confer the sense of “idealism” the literature prize seeks to reward. The prize is awarded to those whose body of work, and specific work during the year of their award, conveys a sense of idealism– not excellence alone. Books are not rewarded solely for their literary merit; they’re rewarded for meeting Nobel criteria. These are not left-wing or right-wing beliefs. They don’t even register on the conventional American political spectrum. This editorial is the literary equivalent of demanding that a popular snack be re-named Freedom Fries.

Additionally, the Academy is under no mandate to be kind towards American attempts; take a look at the NYT bestsellers list and you will see little American proclivity towards literary fiction. Suggesting the elimination of a worldwide literary prize because an Academy member was snide towards Americans is the very type of provincial hubris that frustrates much of the rest of the world.

Selecting a few controversial choices for commentary and deigning the Prize irrelevant because of those choices is also disingenuous. I would say that I found it disappointing that Salman Rushdie was not recognized, but recognizing him would certainly be providing a reward to someone who meets the Nobel criteria and whose cause could be construed as “liberal”– so I have no doubt she is pleased about his exclusion. Marie Arana failed to mention whether J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, or Toni Morrison fall within her 15 deserving laureates, but I would be shocked to hear otherwise. If Arana wishes to argue against the Nobel Prize again, I hope she will choose meaningful criteria for her critique, and will provide an example of a worldwide literary prize that does a better job.

…Thoughts?

Why GM has to fail (and the sooner the better) April 15, 2009

There are plenty of blogs out there with this headline, or something similar, tacked on top. Most of them commence with dissections of General Motors’ bloated budget, taking side bets on bankruptcy proceedings, or blasting the Americans who bought GM’s giant cars as the real scapegoats. GM is in the news a lot lately– after all, they just had the auto show in Detroit a few months ago, and there’s that pesky extended bailout keeping them in the headlines.

Despite all this media attention, I have yet to read these words: “Wow. These guys are completely out of touch with reality, and they have terrible ideas.” So let me illuminate for you what the geniuses over at General Motors are using your tax dollars for.

At the North American International Auto Show in January,General Motors had a sweet trick up the sleeve of their collective lab coat– a state-of-the-art solution to the drag caused by sideview mirrors. Those little glass discs mounted on your I-beams are costing you fuel and slowing you down! The solution? Replace them with tiny cameras, mounted on the sides of the vehicle. These cameras will transmit a real-time image of what’s going on behind your car straight to little screens on your dash.

In one stroke of design genius, Ed Welburn– GM’s VP of global design– has taken a feature that is difficult to break barring a physical accident, is more or less essential to safe vehicle operation, and (most importantly) works simply, and has actually spent time and money developing a replacement for said feature that is unreliable, potentially buggy, and unnecessarily complicated. And need I even point out that the screens, wiring, and hardware for this little gadget probably clock in over 100 lbs? Plus, it’ll require energy, generated from your gas-powered engine, to operate. I’d imagine that gain in fuel efficiency is negated by the added weight and energy drain of these little gems.

This is before I even ask: Seriously? This is the company that builds the H2, and this is their approach to improving fuel economy? Tiny cameras? You make cars that get 8 miles to the gallon and you want to talk about fuel economy? Really?

Let’s give them some credit though– GM is thinking outside the box. They’re “collaborating” and coming up with radical new solutions to existing problems! That’s what Toyota does– GM can come up with new ideas, too! Like the PUMA! (That’s Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility unit to you.) Check it out: Partnering with the increasingly obsolete Segway company, they’ve figured out a way to build a small, two-wheeled gadget capable of carrying people and a few parcels around town! According to NPR, they’re hoping that municipalities will designate smaller lanes next to major roads just for these innovative little gadgets. Genius!

Portland, Oregon, I can see you rolling your eyes. It’s called a bicycle– you have them all over. Look, it’s a nice little idea in some ways. But once again, completely out of touch with reality. It looks like a less-functional, more-dangerous version of the SmartCar– and it would require municipalities to dramatically change how they manage traffic instead of working within the existing frame.

All this amounts to reinventing the wheel, over and over again, but making it square. It’s like trying to bail out a sinking cruise ship with a Dixie cup. General Motors, please go the way of the dinosaurs (except don’t, for the love of all that is sacred, do anything remotely linked to oil…). They’ve gotta go before they have another chance to think or build things.

When I Finally Find a Job March 5, 2009

As soon as I find a new job, I’m getting that expensive face wash.
Well, as soon as I get my first paycheck.
But I’ll feel so much better when I find my new job.

When I get a job, I can finally have my wisdom teeth pulled.
If I can land a job with dental care, that is.
Wait. I could be fired if I take off work for surgery. Scratch the teeth– scratch looking forward to something miserable!

When I finally land a good job, I can stop stressing out.
“Bills” is far too innocuous a word for that malicious stack threatening my credit score.
Realistically, Paycheck One? That belongs to Bills.

But when I finally land a good job, I won’t have one toe out the door.
I want to dedicate myself to it just enough to succeed;
Yet I will keep sending out other resumes. Just in case the company collapses. Again.

Slowly but surely, when I land a good job,
I will acquire new shoes and bras and better-fitting trousers.
I’ll have to, unless I want to imagine watercooler snickering about my not-so-stealthily re-worn slacks.

Just in case the economy continues its lazy spiral–
Because every crop of newly degreed, hungry graduates threatens my tenuous hold on a job–
I sometimes flat-out pray that I find a new job.

And as soon as I find a new job, I tell myself,
I’ll donate to charity, smile more easily, stock my pantry with rare herbs, hit the gym. But I won’t.
I’ll sit around, once-fluid confidence boiled to smears in an old pot,
Conjuring recreational procrastinations,
Obsessing over mailing one more resume so I can stay on my toes–
Just in case that job slithers from beneath my feet
And I am tossed back into the statistics.

Because Sujit is making me depressed… February 4, 2009

…Here’s a list of ten things I truly miss about summertime weather. The cold, the sleet, the wind, the snow, the slush, they are my arch-nemeses. Yes, this is a fluff post, but the weather is bitter and I am counting the days until we go to Bermuda. I can drive in the winter and all that; it’s the little things that make me depressed. Right now I’m really missing:

1. Drying clothes on a rack outside. They smell so fresh and the fibers are all relaxed… *sigh* Towels too. It makes them extra-absorbent.

2. Not having cold toes! Socks, slippers, hot shower, it does not matter– my feet are almost always cold. I miss having my tootsies out in the sunshine and warming them up.

3. Humidity. If my toes are cold, my skin is peeling. No amount of water, lotions, cool rinses, or scarves stop my skin from feeling like an overstretched balloon when I first towel off after a shower… and my sinuses are, like, dusty.

4. Beach hair. My hair looks sooo good in the summertime. I once attempted to re-create this look by blowdrying my hair after applying a mix of leave-in conditioner, sea salt, and Baltimore City tap water. I was not successful. Also this technique left some kind of paste in my scalp. Fail.

5. Picnics! Eating outside is dirty, inconvenient, and requires lugging baskets and bags of plates, Tupperware, and blankets across the park. But I love it!

6. Free / outdoor stuff in DC (and Bmore). Yes, the museums are free right now… but I won’t be walking across the Mall to get to them. It is COLD. (I cannot overstate this.) Free outdoor movies, weekly town festivals, hikes, vendor food, soaking your feet in various monument pools… The current entertainment options include Netflix, YouTube, and a whole lot of hot yoga. And it smells weird in that studio.

7. A good cross-breeze. The air is so gross in wintertime, and everybody dragging their Metro germs, coughs, dirty laundry, and ashy coats with road salt indoors doesn’t help. You get weird smells in the wintertime. It would be nice to just open all the windows and air the place out! But nooo.

8. Hot flowers. Specifically, fragrant herbs & flowers left to steep in the sun. Last summer I left a fistful of French lavender on the dashboard of my car, and the downright aroma-therapeutic properties kept me driving in a 110-degree car with the windows up for like 10 minutes. Maybe it warped my little brain but it felt good…. I also didn’t yell at another driver for, like, a while. Until the smell wore off. Like it has now.

9. Not having to hear ‘Hey Kim, you disappeared in our vacation pictures!” for six months. Yes, I am extremely light-skinned. No, I will not apply bronzer. My winter reflection can damage your camera. My only hope is to get a few rays through my coat of SPF 45, which I can only acquire at the beach. Hence, summer = a few months’ reprieve from looking like a sheet in photos. On a related note, the dermatologists are all wrong and the summer sun clears acne. I would bet the farm on that.

10. Having a modicum of creativity. Floating on my back in the ocean, a quality margarita, sleeping with the windows open… these things put me at peace and warm weather means I don’t dread going outside in the morning. Internal motivation is usually absent until mid-May; I have to fake it until then with a rigid schedule and exercise regimen. Now, off to the bathroom to reorganize my cosmetics samples…

Does bipartisanship work? February 2, 2009

Under George W. Bush, my incessant stream of vitriol was welcomed into the blogosphere and facebook with open arms. Bush was a terrible president with terrible ideas; he and his party (which reigned Congress for six of his eight years in office) allowed the unfettered free market to sink our economy; his neoconservative / pro-Armageddon foreign policy was out of touch with reality; et cetera, et cetera. I like to think it’s because all those things were true six weeks ago, and they’re true today.

But after President Obama’s inauguration, I feel a strange tide tugging at the bottom of my blog. There’s a growing sense that bipartisanship is suddenly the high road, that Mr. Obama is big enough for all members of the political establishment to put aside their ideological differences and work towards the common good. It felt nice, at first, until the House Republican leadership stabbed Mr. Obama in the back. Why? Because he attempted to be “bipartisan.”

Obama wants a huge stimulus package, and fast–and so does the American public, as evidenced by our flailing stock market and skyrocketing unemployment. Despite that tax cuts did more inflation of the market than stimulation of the economy under Bush 43, concessions were made to the House GOP leadership that turned about 30% of the stimulus bill into tax cuts. Why? Because the GOP leadership said that’s what it would take for them to vote for the stimulus bill. Now, the bill didn’t need a single Republican vote to pass; changing the bill to please the GOP leadership was done in the name of bipartisanship.

So, does bipartisanship work? Is there a point to it? I say, Mr. Obama’s got the political capital and a Herculean mandate from the public to fix, basically, everything that’s wrong with the US in the next four years… so in a word: No. I see no reason to include the Republicans, yet the terror of being branded as “liberal” and “uncompromising” is driving Democrats everywhere towards the center-right goal of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship with a party that would rather staunchly declare, “GOP or bust” than give an inch in the name of compromise.

Listen up, people: The Republicans have horrible ideas! They showed them during the first six years of the Bush administration, when Republicans were running every hour of the show and damaging every facet of American public life (that is not an exaggeration). The lesson they’ve taken away from their trouncing in the 2008 elections is, mind-bogglingly, that they weren’t neoconservative and anti-intellectual enough. Apparently, the GOP actually believes that what it needs right now is more SarahPAC; more Michael Steele jeering at the idea of compromise despite that his party is in the desert; more Rush Limbaugh inserting himself into legislative analysis and claiming he should have a voice equal to that of the President.

Last time I checked, the last eight years were a train wreck, Rush Limbaugh is about as relevant as the guy who parked my car at the spa last week, Sarah Palin thought that questions from journalists about the Constitution and the Supreme Court were “unfair”, and political centrism is just a dilution of the ideas that will work. Bipartisanship might work if both parties had different, equally worthwhile ideas and tried to forge a compromise. The GOP’s insistence on being contrary for the sake of contrariness ought to sink the Party, not garner them and their crazy ideas seat at the table.

I say: Steamroll ‘em.

When I think of it, my fingers turn to fists January 29, 2009

A week full of reading blogs coded with misogyny and meetings with hiring managers who think it’s acceptable to call and ask for a date after my interview has boiled my brain down to one gluey question: What does it take for me to be taken seriously, both as a woman in general and as myself in particular? Yes, my self is a woman; however, every little bit of nastiness and disrespect towards women that I read has been getting under my skin as of late, and said irritation is both on my own behalf and on behalf of women as a group. I think all that disrespect has an aggregate effect on how I’m presented and interpreted, and it’s not a pretty result.

Is the answer to file harassment complaints against said flirty manager-types? Not likely to have an effect. Wearing a terrible haircut, no makeup, and ill-fitting clothes to an interview? It’s not like I’m going in there with my breasts squeezed together and my hair tousled. Stay quiet, and you’re stuck reflecting the notion that all is well in the world of women’s issues and that equal pay and sexist jokes are dead issues; speak up and you’re labeled as a bitchy militant feminist who seeks refuge in her blog, where she rails against reality and verbalizes her bitterness.

Well, guess what– I am a feminist, and that doesn’t make me militant or bitchy. I cannot overstate how much work there is to be done on behalf of women in the workplace, in medical care, and in the social sphere (just to name a few areas). The thing that set me off today, as opposed to yesterday or the day before, was actually a Facebook interaction. Yes, it’s a social networking site where people post unfiltered thoughts and comments. The Posted Items and Notes features, however, have become increasingly bloggish, with many users even cross-posting from their Delicious and WordPress accounts. So I feel like it’s fair to demand a certain level of accountability from posters.

The blog/note that kicked things off today started off like a joke. It was a rant against the burgeoning culture of mandatory tipping in the service economy, but bubbling to the surface were nasty little bits of contempt against women. Interspersed were gems such as “I know better now. Take your cute little laugh and pathetic attempt to wink and [sic] you’re ‘what can I get for you, dollface?’ little voice and go practice taking caps of bottles. You’re not good enough at it yet to impress me.”

Awkward? For me, the phrasing there crosses that slim line between highlighting the game of the sexes that female bartenders play along with to get ahead and enters the territory of subjugation and misogyny. It has an unmistakable tone of, “I can’t have you, so fuck you; you’re a whore for making me want you.” Once again, can’t have a woman = not her fault. It’s that kind of rape justification logic that suffuses all other discourse about women. She was asking for it, she wanted it, she started it… so it’s her fault. Humorous intent isn’t a good enough reason to circulate content like that.

In retrospect, it could have been any post that set me off; this one just happened to do the trick. It is no longer acceptable to hide misogyny behind a character or comic voice; these images circulate in the collective minds of everyone who reads them and have a cumulative effect on our perception of women. No matter how innocuous the writer claims his intentions were, talking about women with that kind of bitterness and hate is disrespectful and reduces us, among other things, to sex objects and second-class citizens. It is no less serious than this.

Of course, my ire was already stoked by the text message I received the previous evening– from a private cellphone– saying that it was “OK that I didn’t want the job” and we could “still be friends LOL… let me know when you can hang out.” After staring at my phone, open-mouthed, I realized it was from a hiring manager who’d interviewed me the previous week. This on the heels of having to– repeatedly– explain to the big boss at my last place of employment what my policy on inter-office dating would be, should the opportunity present itself. Which was directly preceded by no fewer than three colleagues feeling the need to “confess” to crushes on me. It’s not that I’m excessively desirable or flirtatious; somewhere along the way, the message didn’t get across to these boys that the workplace is not a fertile ground for getting a date.

I don’t bring my sneaky, evil feminine wiles into the workplace; I don’t wink to get the copier fixed; I don’t sidle up to my interview subjects to get them to open up on the record; I didn’t wear a tight skirt to get my edits to newspaper articles approved. Hell, I never even did the pop-and-wink when I bartended– I was objectified enough while captive behind that bar without a push-up bra and mascara.

I thought integrity was what it took to be taken seriously. In September I thought that the dichotomy of ballbreaker vs. ingenue had been shattered by Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Angelina Jolie– women who are neither the angel in the house nor the tough guy, but are women recognized for having talents in their own right. They might be tough– and that toughness even appears novel to some people who, apparently, have never met a working mother– but nobody’s asking them to give up their femininity. I wish I knew how they did it.

Blog for choice 09 January 22, 2009

In honor of the 36th anniversary of  the Roe v. Wade decision, I’m blogging for choice. It is fundamental to remember that the right to choose is a hard-won and newly-defended right– despite the explosive scientific and medical advances of the 1950’s and 1960’s, religious doctrine guided by the hand of sexual oppression still determined abortion policy in much of the United States in 1973. Not the decisions of women and their doctors, but the doctrines of religions despite the clear delineation of church and state outlined in our Constitution.

The enforcement of that separation, combined with the right to privacy outlined in the 14th Amendment, provide women with the right to choose abortion without approval from government, husbands, boyfriends, parents, rapists, judges, or police.

It’s become clear in the subsequent years that the overwhelming majority of women do not view abortion as a method of birth control (a favorite argument of the religious right), but rather as a last resort. Despite the assertion that women use abortion as birth control, the same religious right fails to see that women must be provided with quality education about and access to viable methods of birth control– the only realistic way to reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States.

The right to abortion must be protected and defended on a federal level. The states’ rights argument is a shield that would allow individual states to violate a woman’s constitutional rights. Abortion should be safe and legal, and ideally, rare. Rare because it’s a choice nobody likes to make, and that isn’t taken lightly; rare because good reproductive planning should decrease the amount of surgical and chemical abortions necessary. But not rare because the government intervenes and tells women what to do with their wombs.

Here’s a fascinating video on another blog for choice: How to stump anti-choicers

How have they never thought about the answer to this question?

And below, from the DNC’s 2008 party platform:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Defend and protect your rights, and report any organization that tries to intimidate or tread on your right to choose by reporting them to your local NARAL/Pro Choice America chapter.

Yo DJ, that’s my DJ January 7, 2009

Some say the best club DJ is the one who plays songs you’ve never heard but instantly love, or the one who perfectly blends tracks. I disagree. We all know the best DJ is the one who plays your request when you slyly sidle up to the booth and wittily shout, “HEY! Do you have The Roots/Sweet Caroline/David Allen Coe?”

This DJ is the best because when s/he plays your jam, you are the coolest person in the club– the music master is taking advice from you. You are also smugly responsible for everyone’s good time. Awareness of this supremacy usually leads to the busting out of your finest dance moves and shouting, “yo DJ! That’s my DJ! Thanks dude!” after the first verse. For a few minutes, you are Tony Manero.

While I am far too familiar with the elation that accompanies hearing a requested song, I’m not a DJ. I’ve always suspected that they meet Saturday night song requests with equal amounts of derision and resignation (”Really? Don’t Stop Believin’ again?”). I think DJs probably prefer the patron who approaches the booth and says, “that’s an awesome track. Do you have anything else like it?” and lets the DJ do their thing.

Jason is one of those awesome patrons. He read my blog on Christopher Hitchens’ antireligion argument and asked, “How seriously can/should we take the arguments of someone with an evidenced record of poor reasoning and inappropriate public statements?” So I pondered and pondered, and decided that the works of such individuals should be analyzed while we do the following:

1) accept that a broken clock is right twice a day. (Unless it’s digital.)
2) use our own logical reasoning and assessment skills to determine whether their argument commits logical fallacies or goes too far in selectively employing facts in order to prove its point; in other words, does this argument hold water, or is it complete BS?

These rules keep me reading the blather of George Will and Karl Rove every week, despite that I disagree with damn near every word that comes out of their mouths. Will’s arguments are often rooted in conservative philosophies, and are a little more palatable than Rove’s blatant mischaracterization of facts in an attempt to remain relevant. But I read ‘em both, to stay informed and also because… sometimes they’re insightful.

Will’s pet tactic is to use an analysis of a historical event (war strategies, Supreme Court decisions, presidencies) to support his position (usually the antiliberal one). By choosing carefully, Will can argue for the conservative stance; here, he uses the rising cost of healthcare to argue that socialized medicine would be a disaster. His statistics are fine, but his final assessment is flawed. Because Medicare has gotten it wrong, he declares that government can’t get healthcare right. Even though I disagree with Will on this subject, he’s sometimes on-point– like when he said that governments shouldn’t throw their clandestine operatives under the bus a la Valerie Plame. Right twice a day.

Karl Rove is a different breed. While his definition of “fact” wouldn’t get past a third-grade history teacher, he’s a shrewd political mind. He authored the Bush 43 talking points and can deliver them hook, line, and sinker, plus he got Bush 43 elected… twice. His inexplicable stream of op-eds in respected publications always push the neo-conservative agenda, but he’s also able to assess the entire political playing field in real time. He’s like Tom Brady– he can change the whole game by spinning it his way. Therefore, although Rove lives in a fantasy world where Bush 43 is a misunderstood genius, he had a keen eye for the 2008 elections (saying that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be able to overtake the charisma juggernaut that is Barack Obama), and was able to see plainly what cost the RNC so many seats in 2006. Rove is an evil, evil man who has no problem lying to the American people and to the President he serves, but he’s also got a sharp eye.

So, even though Hitchens supported the Iraq war, he also supported Danish newspapers as they faced a firestorm for publishing Muhammad cartoons. I can get behind that. And even though his book “God is Not Great” is sometimes hysterical, and is in certain chapters a disjointed excuse for him to rail against organized religion, he is right that “Religion Poisons Everything.” Additionally, since Hitchens is one of these George Will types instead of the Karl Rove type– that is to say, he uses rational arguments to assert occasionally questionable positions, instead of using blatantly false and misleading information to get money or power– I am willing to hear him out.

I figure that if we can’t engage those with whom we disagree and find some common point, they will run off to a cabin in Montana and mix up 55-gallon drums of explosives. Or, you know, vote Bush/Cheney. To go back to the broken clock, Bush 43 is currently attempting to slide some protections for the oceans under Dick Cheney’s nose– which means I may have to repeal my longstanding statement that I cannot find a single Bush action or doctrine with which I agree. If no one is right 100% of the time, I guess no one can be wrong 100% of the time, either.

Now I’d like to make your ears bleed a little bit by displaying the only sensible thing Ann Coulter has ever said: “Harriet Miers isn’t qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one.” Now that is one busted clock who managed to get something right in her miserable life.

The concept of satire December 7, 2008

It appears that many of those who read post #165 are unfamiliar with it. As an aside: If this is the sort of flaming I’m in for whenever I gently mock my beloved and beworshipped President Barack Obama, we’re in for a long 4 (8 maybe?!) years… Everyone gets busted equally here.

Dear Barack Obama: Where’s my job? December 7, 2008

So this is appropriate… President-elect Obama’s speechwriters can party hard and that’s fine. But please explain to me how someone so inarticulate that they have to grope a cardboard cutout of Senator Clinton instead of scathingly critique her– and so misogynistic that this is how they treat women in politics– is head of speechwriting for the whole freaking White House?

Mr. Obama, give me a break. If you’re going to give this silver-platter job to some twenty-something screwup… I’ve got your screwup right here. See, I thought I wasn’t bestest and brightest enough to make the cut for the Obama dream team… but seeing staffers such as Favreau makes me realize I, too, have a chance! If this kid is qualified, I’ve no doubt that my intellectual prowess and communications skills are up to snuff. I have… what’s that… word… hope!

I’ll tell you this much: Closeted skeletons or past e-mail indiscretions aside, I’d definitely disable my Facebook upon acceptance of the job– and I can promise you I’d find better criticisms of political rivals than pointing out that they have breasts. Oh yes, yes I can.

So give that speechwriting gig to me instead, President-elect Obama. I may not have the Heineken-drinking skills or cardboard-breast-groping talents of Jon Favreau, but I promise you I could do the job at least as well as that guy.